Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED)

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The Bellingham Police Department is
committed to building partnerships with community members in a variety of
ways to keep Bellingham a beautiful and safe community. We have staff
trained in Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) pronounced
"sep-ted". We can be a resource to you before building or remodeling.

If our community does not pay attention to these design principles, we
can inadvertently create environments that are conducive to criminal
activity. We would then take on much more liability concerns than we
intended.

The basic premise of CPTED is the proper design and effective use of the
built environment can lead to a decrease in crime or fear of crime and
improve the quality of life.

There are three basic overlapping design principles of CPTED: Access
Control, Natural Surveillance and Territorial Reinforcement. These
principles can help create an environment that increases the perception of
risk for a potential offender.